One year and counting

Let the dream begin is officially one year old now =) Now, the last promised entry: (yes, it's sappy)

Why did you choose "kawaranaikimochi" as your blog address? Where did it come from, and what does it mean?

Japanese:

Kawaranai mono nado nani hitotsu nakutemo
Kawaranai kimochi nakushita kunai

English:

Even without those permanent things in life
My unchanging feelings will never disappear

I named my blog "Let the dream begin" after my love for Phantom of the Opera; for the address of the blog, I needed something more original that hasn't been used before. After a few tries (my first few choices were rejected b/c someone already took those names), I decided to turn to my favorite anime and manga: Bleach, for inspiration. Anyone knows me also knows that I'm a huge Bleach fan; chances are that during second year, if you could see my computer screen, you'd occasionally see me reading the manga or watching the anime online instead of listening to lecture. It's such a good series; in fact, Bleach is so popular in Japan that a group of people turned the anime into a live musical called "Rock Bleach Musical." Many thought the idea of a Bleach musical was ridiculous, but hey, I love musicals. =) The song above, titled "Kawaranai Kimochi," was performed in the first "Rock Bleach Musical," which was so received that it was followed by five sequels, two of which aired this past spring. I think I'd just started watching the musicals around summer of 2007 (when this blog was created), and because I liked that one song so much, I decided to use it as my blog address.

"Kawaranai Kimochi" can be loosely translated from Japanese to English into "unchanging feelings" or "unchanging emotions," whichever you prefer. It is, first and foremost, a song about friendship. The line above said, "My unchanging feelings will never disappear," which to me is the perfect way of describing friends for life. Just as night turns into morning, friends enter and exit our lives, sometimes never to be seen again. Despite that, I believe that there are some friends who make such a great impact in our lives that even if we don't speak for months or years at a time, they will always be friends because of the memories we share. Another line from "Kawaranai Kimochi:"

These important memories, these important feelings
I don't want to lose them, no matter what my future holds

After this year, we'll all go our separate ways, and it's impossible to say when we'll meet again. Despite that, I still believe that as long as we hold the memories of our friends close to our hearts, then our feelings of friendship will never change. My feelings certainly haven't.

Happy 4th of July!

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world...

One year ago on this day, I drove down to Corpus Christi for my first rotation of third year: pediatrics. Now that was a memorable rotation. Who can ever forget Cafe Driscoll, hanging out with the Corpus Crew, the death of little AJ (for Elizabeth and me), and riding in the same car as Amy? I entered medical school thinking I was going to be a pediatrician; Driscoll (and also family practice) taught me that as much as I love kids, I don't want to spend the rest of my life treating them. And now, one of the entries I promised:

Where did "Let the dream begin" come from?

Let the dream begin,
Let your darker side give in
To the power of the music that I write...
The power of the music of the night

This is an excerpt from the song "Music of the Night" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, my long-time favorite musical. I first heard the original Broadway soundtrack in its entirety when I was around 13 or 14, and I totally fell in love with it. Who wouldn't love hearing Raoul sing, "All I Ask of You" to Christine, where he promises to love her and protect her? To this day I still think it's one of the most romantic songs ever. =) I've listened to the soundtrack so many times that I know all the words to almost every song by heart (except for "Masquerade" and "Prima Donna" b/c there's too many people singing in those), and I was so happy when I got to play "Selections from Phantom of the Opera" in high school. I practiced those pieces so much that I can still play them from memory to this day (just not as well as I used to). "Music of the Night" is one of my favorites; it's my ringtone for text messages as well =) Even more importantly, Phantom of the Opera introduced me to the world of musicals in general, and now I love musicals. I got to see Miss Saigon on Broadway and Phantom of the Opera (of course) in college. I want to see Avenue Q this month downtown, but I probably won't b/c of boards. Oh well.

So why "Let the dream begin?" Because when I first started this blog, we were leaving behind the familiar world of classrooms and textbooks for a brand new world of clinical rotations. Here's another excerpt from "Music of the Night:"

Let your mind start a journey through a strange, new world!
Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before!
Let your soul take you where you long to be!
Only then can you belong to me...

Just as the Phantom tries to persuade Christine to leave her old life behind to be with him, we all had to leave a part of ourselves behind when we entered 3rd year and took one step closer to fulfilling our goals of becoming doctors. We can't be those innocent, naive, wide-eyed first and second year students playing doctor in Clin Med anymore. We have to start taking more responsibility because one day, we'll be the ones giving orders and trying to help people other than ourselves. And when we graduate, this will no longer be a dream, but our reality.

How's studying coming along?

Today I ran into Fallon at the library and she asked me how the studying was coming along. My reply: "It's not." I'm trying to balance doing questions (my goal is 100 a day but I haven't been meeting it) with going through review books; this week I want to focus on psych and obgyn since I haven't had those in over six months. Ben was at the library, too; we parked ourselves in the cushy couches in front of the TV and did our respective studying. It was hard to concentrate b/c I was worried that I wouldn't be able to transfer some videos from my old desktop (hadn't been used in 3 years) to my laptop, but when I got home I managed to figure out what to do (thanks for the advice, Ben) I'm going to go through the old psych flashcards tomorrow and see if they work, then do more questions. Questions are the key to remembering things for me.

Greetings from Pearl

Hi, everybody! My name is Pearl, and I'm a Netherland dwarf rabbit who likes wheat bread, fruit, and organic vegetables. I also like ripping up newspapers whenever I feel like it. My pet human, whom you know as crescendo, is studying for her Step 2 exams (whatever those are) right now, so don't expect many blog entries from her in the next month or so. I make things interesting around the house and keep her on her toes, though. The other day she got mad at me because I jumped on her violin case just to see if I could balance on it without falling off (and I could), and she got even madder when I left some hraka* on her case. I don't see what's the harm in that; it's not like she touches her violin much anymore anyway. Although the other day she did pick up her violin to play a few songs; I think they were titled, "All I Ask of You" and "Music of the Night." Hmm, I wonder what brought that on? She doesn't sound as good as she used to, and I shake my ears at her to let her know it. That annoys her sometimes, hehehe.

I got to go now, my humans are home so it's time for me to come out and PLAY! Bye!


--Pearl

*hraka = Lapine (rabbit speak) for "droppings" (ever read Watership Down? If not, you should; it's really an excellent book about a colony of rabbits finding and building a place to call Home)

Protecting my blog

It's been almost a year since several friends and I decided to create blogs so that no matter where we were doing our 3rd year rotations, we could still share our experiences online. Now third year is over, and I'm pleased to say that over 200 posts later, my blog is still going strong. =) I gave the link to no more than 10-15 people and friends and asked that they keep the blog to themselves and not share it with others (aside from their husbands and wives, maybe), but quite honestly, I don't know how many of you honored my request. Maybe you told other friends and classmates about my blog, and for all I know, classmates who are not my friends and whom I do not want reading this blog are reading it right now. As much as I'd love to keep this blog only within my circle of friends, I think I have to accept that this blog is no longer entirely anonymous or friends-only (not everyone has Blogger so I don't have that option), and it's a bit upsetting =/

With all that said and done, I have something special planned to commemorate one year of active blogging =) Has anyone ever wondered why I named the blog the way I did? Where does "Let the dream begin" come from? (this should be obvious to several of you). What the heck does kawaranai kimochi mean and where did it come from? So if you've got a little time to spare, I challenge you to find where these phrases come from, and in the process, get to know more about me =) And in another week or so, the answers to these questions will be revealed.

Baby Shower!

Ben and Susan's baby shower was this evening at Pappasito's. Since I knew I would be on vacation until yesterday evening, I bought their baby gifts a week in advance: a few items off their gift registry, plus a toy of my choice: a plushie duck that's incredibly soft and perfect for babies. I've always loved the Ty Baby or Pluffie line b/c the toys are so squeezably soft, and I specifically hunt for one of those toys every time I attend a baby shower. Heather still remembers the little brown bear I got for Cohen (sadly, it's no longer sold) before he was born.

It was nice having the whole gang back together again; Jennifer was in town for the weekend and Erwin was still in town but will be moving to San Antonio soon =/ It was nice to catch up with each other and hear about the other girls' visit to NYC while I talked about what I did in Philly. Ben and Susan looked very happy; there's just something about being pregnant that makes so many women glow =) Justin had his camcorder out and taped Susan opening her presents; Anara's going to be one lucky girl b/c she got a whole bunch of cute clothes and toys from her mommy and daddy's friends who, like her parents, can't wait to meet her =D

Back from Philly

I flew to Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon and took the regional rail to Conshohocken (1.5 hr ride) instead of renting the car. By good luck and chance, my hotel was only 2 minutes from the train station and 5 minutes' walk from the testing site, so everything was within walking distance. I saw a few KCOM guys studying in the hotel lounge, but chose to study on my own in my own room. The Residence Inn at Conshohocken was one of the best places I've ever stayed at. They had continental dinner AND breakfast, free Internet access, friendly staff, and a very comfortable bed. The only downside: the train tracks were outside my window and I could hear the train blowing its horn every time it pulled into the station. Thank goodness there was no train service after midnight; otherwise I would have gone nuts. (It DID wake me up at 6 a.m., but I needed that)

I was the only student from my school taking the PE that day; of the other eleven, there were 4 KCOM, 4 VCOM, 1 WVSOM, 1 LECOM, and 1 DMU-COM. Needless to say I wasn't very talkative since the others all had other people to talk to for the most part; the girl from DMU was very chatty and talked to everyone. We had our little orientation meeting and then started. We saw our first four patients, then had lunch. After that, we saw another 4 patients, then took a 15 min break. Then we saw our last four patients, and we were done for the day. I won't go into details about cases and stuff; I just hope I passed.

After the test was over (and what a relief it was), I met my parents in central Philadelphia where we proceeded to spend the next two days touring Philly. We went to see Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Center (very cool place to go), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. To get to the museum we got to ride the "Phlash," a bright purple trolley bus (very hard to miss). The museum was awesome; I saw a bunch of paintings that I'd only read about in textbooks (i.e. works by Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir) I think going to the museum was the best part of the trip; it's been years since I've been so excited about Greek mythology and paintings by Impressionists (sadly, I abandoned my interest in art for medical school). It was nice to reclaim something I had forgotten.

Pictures are up on Facebook if you want a look =)

Off to take COMLEX Step II PE

Wish me luck =) I'll be back on Saturday.

Goodbye, MS III

This morning I stopped by Dr. RR's clinic (from family medicine) to say hello and tell him about his patient who I saw in the hospital. He knew enough about her to remember that she had renal insufficiency, so we discussed the possibility of her having CHF, what medication changes Dr. L recommended, and more. It's nice to follow up on what a patient's PCP will do after the patient leaves the hospital, and Dr. RR said he'd look her up and see what her echo says when she comes to his clinic next week. I also said hi to Lupe; she said Tawanna's found a new job in Watauga (which is closer to where she lives anyway) so they need to find a new RN. *sigh* I've barely been gone two months and already people are leaving. Still, at least I know I'm still welcome; when I asked the front desk people if I could go on back and say hello, one lady said, "Girl...you go back there and say hi right now." =)

The morning was spent doing questions to prepare me for the IM shelf (which we'd all heard horror stories about), and when time came for the exam, I was still in question-answering mode and managed to finish the exam with 5 minutes to spare, no rushing. I'm not sure how well I did, but I don't think I failed so that's good. Afterwards, I went with Dina, Heather, Stephanie, Fallon, Cyril, and Erwin to Baker's to eat and chat. We had a lot of stories to exchange about our various rotations, some funny, others infuriating (i.e. classmates skipping out on surgeries by leaving notes for their attendings saying they needed to study and taking off without another word. What BS) We also discussed our experiences at Methodist; Dina had it much worse than I did, while Erwin said he had a good time there. Most of us know what we want to do with our lives now. And to think, this time next year, we'll be DOCTORS. But for now I'm glad just to be a 4th year. =D